“This is Oswin Lewis Quint,” Caleb said, pulling up a photo on his tablet. He set the tablet on the bathroom counter so Oz and Laila could see it. Aidan hadn’t come with them after the meeting and Caleb didn’t know what was keeping him. “The man you need to impersonate.”
“If he’s my double and we have the same face, how come he’s so much better-looking than me?” Oz asked, patting his scruffy jaw and cheeks as though it might answer his question.
“A lot of it’s tailoring,” Laila said. Privately, Caleb thought some of it might be hiring expensive personal trainers and chefs to oversee every aspect of Quint’s diet and exercise regime, but they didn’t have time to make those kinds of changes, so they’d have to hope that stealing a few of Quint’s pricey suits would do the trick. “The rest is an expensive haircut and a very subtle makeup artist. Lucky you, I’m here.”
Oz eyed Laila and the irregular starburst of black eyeshadow around her right eye. There was a rectangular bar of equally thick black color over her left cheek. Facility 17 didn’t have a facial recognition algorithm to block, but her asymmetrical makeup was a kind of armor. She’d gone back to wearing it and curling her pink hair right after being rescued. How she’d found a curler on this asteroid full of short-haired, style-averse people was a mystery.
“Subtle,” Oz repeated, skeptical.
“For you, I can be as boring as I need to be,” she said.
“Clothes and makeup are only part of it,” Caleb said. “You need to walk and talk like Quint for this to work. He’s too private for interviews, but we’ll work with what little video we have.”
Oz groaned. “That sounds hard. Let’s start with the haircut.”
“There were already really nice shears in the facility, did you know that?” Laila asked Caleb, making conversation while she circled Oz like a sculptor studying a block of stone. “Chávez lent these to me. Since the team was supposed to be here for months, they had to think about this stuff.”
Caleb and Laila spent the next half-hour treading in the blond fluff that had floated down to the bathroom floor in her first efforts, studying Oz from all angles, comparing his haircut to the tablet Caleb had brought in. There were few photos of Quint available to the public, and only three where it was possible to see the sides and back of his head.
“It’s the front that matters most,” Caleb said. Laila had done a nice job of trimming and arranging Oz’s bangs so they mimicked Quint’s carelessly dapper, sideswept style. “And as long as you get the behavior mostly right, people won’t get too caught up in the other details. You need to shave your face. Do you have contact lenses?”
Oz shook his head. “Hate putting my fingers in my eyes.”
“That’s a problem. Quint doesn’t wear glasses. We don’t have time to fix your eyesight. How bad is it?”
“Bad,” Oz said.
“Hm. Well, try not to squint, and if anybody hands you anything to read, pass it to me.”
“Why would somebody be handing me things to read?” Oz asked. “Aren’t we just going on some broadcast so I can make a speech? We’re not actually going to his office…” Oz trailed off when confronted with Caleb’s expression. “Shit. How much are you paying me, again?”
Caleb pressed a razor into Oz's hand. “Shave.”
Clean-shaven and with his hair in Laila’s best approximation of Quint’s style, Oz was almost right. He was still wearing the stained t-shirt and shapeless old jeans he’d arrived in, but to fix that, they needed access to Quint’s wardrobe.
“Stand up straight,” Caleb said after evaluating Oz.
“I am.”
Caleb poked him between the shoulder blades and helped him square his shoulders. It was a start. “Chin up. Now walk.”
Oz walked to the other end of the bathroom, past the sinks and the stalls enclosing showers and toilets. He had a casual, shuffling gait, and by the time he’d returned to where Laila and Caleb stood, his shoulders had drooped into their usual rounded posture.
Aidan showed up then, pausing in the doorway to take in Laila sweeping up the hair cuttings while Caleb prodded at Oz.
“The haircut looks good.”
“We’re working on it,” Caleb said. The way Oz carried himself, each vertebra piled on top of the one underneath, his arms hanging at his sides and now both hands jammed into his pockets, all of those were choices. Not conscious decisions, maybe, but still choices. Oz had to choose to mimic Quint.
“Straighten your spine and pull your shoulders back,” Caleb said. Oz followed the instructions and ended up stiff and awkward, like a statue whose artist had read about human beings but never met one.
“Walk,” Caleb suggested, and Oz marched like he’d been programmed to. “No, relax. But not that much.”
“Which is it, relaxed or not? I don’t know what you want from me here.”
Clearly a different approach was required. Caleb chewed the inside of his cheek. He’d told everyone he could teach Oz to act. He’d actually said I’m good at that out loud. If he couldn’t, Aidan would move on without him. Working with Oz would be easier if Aidan weren’t watching.
“I think I’ve been explaining it wrong,” Caleb said, clearing his throat. He could talk about this without giving specific examples of, say, successful kisses he’d staged. He could. “It’s not about your posture, not really. It’s about what you’re feeling.”
“I’m feeling like I don’t get it,” Oz said.
That much was obvious.
“You were good at pretending to be your double,” Aidan said to Caleb, speaking up and smiling like he was being friendly and helpful instead of casually poking at a bruise. “How’d you do it?”
In a moment of desperation, Caleb ignored Aidan and turned to Laila for refuge. A mistake. At Aidan’s question, she’d perked up like a cat that had smelled fish frying. God damn it.
“Look, watch this,” Caleb said to Oz. “See Laila? See how she’s standing? All the personality it conveys?”
“Uh,” Oz said.
Laila had raised one thick eyebrow. Caleb resisted the urge to gulp. He'd chosen this path and it was too late to back off now. Besides, the fact that Laila was brimming with attitude made her perfect for this lesson.
“You see that face she’s making at me, like she thinks I’m full of shit?”
“Mm,” Laila said, shifting so her arms were crossed. “I don’t remember agreeing to this.”
“And now see how she’s gonna kick me in the shins if I say one wrong thing about her appearance or her personality? That’s the kind of expression we’re talking about. She’s doing some of it with her eyebrow, and some of it with her arms. And she’s wearing those boots, too—that’s why I said the thing about kicking me in the shins, because those look especially threatening. But it’s not just her face and her arms and her outfit. There’s more. Things you only perceive when you really think about how people use their bodies.”
Caleb stood next to Laila, both of them facing Oz, and mimicked her pose. Arms crossed over chest, one hip jutting out slightly, feet planted. He raised an eyebrow.
“See?”
“You don’t look anything like her,” Oz said.
“That won’t be a problem for you,” Caleb said. “Stop thinking about the surface. Think about what’s underneath. What do you see then?”
“It’s assertive,” Oz said after a pause. “Maybe a little challenging. But not outright aggressive. Kind of a wait-and-see pose. And she looks... like she might laugh.”
“That’s a recent development,” Caleb said. He dropped the pose and went to stand by Oz. “But good, all of that was good. You know how I imitated her? I didn’t do it by perfecting the exact configuration of my skeleton. I thought about the attitude she was conveying. I felt it. And you could see it, since you described her attitude perfectly just now. If you can make yourself feel it, the rest will fall into place. Your body knows what that feeling looks like.”
Caleb stopped. Aidan had said something similar to him—your body already knows how—about jumping. A strange awareness, like Caleb’s new sense of the pulse of the Nowhere, but warmer, rushed over his skin and made the hair on his forearms stand up. Aidan’s expression was intense, his head tilted forward with interest and his black hair falling into his eyes.
“Well, this has been fun,” Laila said. “But as we’ve mentioned, I'm a lot less subtle than Oswin Lewis Quint.”
“The principle is the same,” Caleb said. “You want to stand and walk and move like Quint? Feel like Quint.”
“And how do I know what he feels?” Oz said. He gestured at the photo. “He’s not giving a lot away. He’s smiling.”
“Right. And that’s a posed photo meant for advertising purposes. He probably wanted to look friendly and trustworthy.”
“Not sure he managed it,” Laila muttered.
“You’re right that this photo isn't much to go on,” Caleb said. “Give me a sec.”
He strode out of the bathroom. Emil wasn’t in his room, but Caleb found him a few minutes later in the greenhouse. “Do you have a moment? Can you come with me?”
Emil looked perplexed at being dragged to the bathroom. Presented with the sight of Aidan, Laila, and Oz amid the detritus of their on-going makeover session, his confusion only worsened.
“You’ve met Quint,” Caleb said. “Tell us about him.”
“I’m not sure I know anything you don’t,” Emil said. “And I wasn’t at my best during that meeting. He looks like that.” Emil turned his hand, palm up, toward the display.
“How did you feel in the room with him?” Caleb pressed.
“Anxious.”
Caleb turned to Oz. “What do you think it takes to make someone as confident and collected as Emil feel anxious?”
“I don’t know that I’m either of th—” Emil started, but Caleb cut him off with a gesture and waited for Oz to answer.
“Power,” Oz said. “But Quint’s not bigger or stronger than you—not if he really is the same size as me—so it’s not a physical kind of power.”
Caleb intended to validate this insight, but Emil was already nodding and saying, “He reminded me of a predator. And I had just been in a cave with this alien beast. A huge, muscular animal with six legs and two rows of very sharp teeth. The way it moved... Quint, even with all his polish, reminded me of that.”
Oz frowned at Caleb. “How do I feel like a predator? I’ve never felt like one before. I’m a guy with four failed businesses who lives in a shitty studio apartment. My only social life is getting lunch with my mom every Sunday. Every girlfriend I’ve ever had has dumped me, not the other way around. Honestly, before you came to bring me here, I hadn’t been out in... a while. The idea of leaving the apartment had become overwhelming.”
Caleb met Oz’s gaze and put his hands on his shoulders. “That’s fear. You have to imagine you can’t feel it.”
“Oh, great. Sure. That’ll be easy.”
“Think of it like this. You’re not trying to be Oz-with-no-fear. That’s too complicated, too close to home. Don’t even think of it as ‘a guy like me, but fearless.’ You have to pretend to be something else entirely. Oswin Lewis Quint isn’t a person. He has so much money that he’s untouchable. Practically immortal. He can have anything he wants at any time.”
Aidan spoke up. “There are only two things he can’t have in the whole universe, one of which is genuine immortality.”
“What’s the other?”
“Access to the Nowhere,” Laila answered, her eyes meeting Aidan’s for an instant. They must have talked about this in their cell. “Quint is so used to being able to have anything he wants, to having an unlimited amount of power, that it drives him up the wall that there are people in the world who have something he doesn’t. And not just people, but runners. Nobodies from nowhere. Most runners don’t have much family, and a lot of us grow up poor. We don’t get the best educations, and many of us barely get jobs at all. But we can do something Quint can’t. Something his private jets and spacecraft will never be able to do, no matter how much he pays for them. And that makes him so mad.”
“How do you know that, if you’ve never met him and he doesn’t give interviews?” Oz asked. “Not that he’d say those things in an interview.”
“He put me in a cell and starved me for a week,” Laila said. “I know him well enough.”
“There,” Caleb said. “Anything he doesn’t have, he's willing to torture or kill to get. That’s how you have to move through the world. Like other people’s opinions and feelings—their lives don’t matter to you. Like you own everything you’ve ever laid eyes on and will soon own everything you haven’t. Like nothing can harm or hinder or even touch you, because that’s how powerful you are. Like you left fear behind a few trillion dollars ago. Move through the world like that—fearless, careless, voracious with want. Oswin Lewis Quint is a monster in a human suit.”
Before Quint arrived, Dax herded Aidan, Caleb, and Oz into the supply closet now designated as a surveillance center. A grey table spanned the back wall of the room, and on the wall above it was a large display divided in four. One quarter of the display showed Lange’s room. The researcher was lying motionless on his bed, the stretch of his long brown body interrupted only by the pair of blue plaid boxers that Caleb had cajoled him into wearing. The large orange cat was curled up next to him, while a tuxedo cat and a tabby were munching on cat food in another corner of the room.
All three cats were named after physicists, since it was Lange who had named them. Caleb hadn’t seen them around the facility much, but he knew Kit had rescued them from the Nowhere. They’d had the same experience as Lange himself, but they didn’t seem to share his trauma. Thankfully, the cats weren’t manifesting telekinetic powers, either.
The other three quarters of the screen showed the kitchen, the common room, and the hallway outside Lange’s room. Kit, Emil, and Quint were approaching the door.
Aidan sat down in the cheap grey rolling chair in front of the display, resting his hands on the table. There was a beat-up old keyboard on it, most of the letters worn off the keys, and a chipped mug, adding to the feeling that this set-up had been scrounged up from scraps. The mug was empty—Dax wouldn’t let coffee go to waste—but the smell permeated the room, layered over the sterile, dusty scent of the closet itself. Oz moved to stand next to him, looking, as always, like he didn’t know what his body was for. His hands dangled at his sides. Caleb took up position behind Aidan, settling one hand on the padding on the back of the chair.
Maybe it was the smell, or maybe it was the image on the display, but Caleb’s stomach swam. They needed to do this, to show Oz the character he’d have to adopt, but it felt all wrong to be stuffed in a closet when Oswin Lewis Quint was a short walk away.
Caleb didn’t know what he would do if he ended up in the same space as Quint, but at least he would have the option of doing something. Caleb leaned forward, as if being closer to the image would help.
Quint prowled into Lange’s room, his dress shoes tapping the floor. Caleb failed to find his voice for a moment, and then managed to say, “Watch his gait.”
Oz nodded.
On the display, Emil was speaking in a low voice. “He just showed up here like this. We think he was trapped in the Nowhere. He hasn’t spoken since he got back.”
“You said he had telekinesis,” Quint said, his eyes sharp with interest. He didn’t look away from Lange until one of the cats got close to him. He made a pinched face and shooed the tuxedo cat away with a toe.
“We think he does,” Emil said. “Objects move erratically in his vicinity. But he doesn’t do it on command, and he hasn’t been speaking to us. We don’t really know what he went through, or if he’ll ever be—”
Quint strode to the bed in two steps and prodded Lange in the arm as if he were a corpse or a mannequin instead of a living person. Caleb sucked in a breath.
He’d examined Lange twice since they’d brought him back, finding him slightly underweight and deficient in vitamins, but otherwise healthy. Lange hadn’t reacted to the examination in any way, but Caleb had been gentle. It was his job. No. It was his obligation as a decent human being.
Watching Quint disregard that obligation so cavalierly made Caleb clench the back of the chair in rage.
Whatever Emil and Kit were discussing with that monster went unheard.
“Caleb?”
In the dim, bluish light of the room, Aidan’s eyes were lit with concern. They shone, huge in his too-thin face, smudged with fatigue. Because Quint had imprisoned and tortured him.
“We should kill him,” Caleb said. Somehow he’d loosened his jaw enough to speak.
Aidan had explained why he didn’t want to kill Quint, but reasoning evaporated in the heat of Caleb’s anger. He could jump into that room right now and eject Quint into space. He’d be dead in two minutes. A couple of short jumps, a matter of seconds, and Quint would get what he deserved.
“Caleb.” Aidan laid a hand over Caleb’s, and at the warmth of his touch, Caleb’s fingers relaxed. With great care and a steady gaze, Aidan said, “Step outside with me? On foot, I mean.”
Oh. He’d been poised to jump.
Aidan kept a grip on him even after the closet door shut behind them. If Caleb was going somewhere, Aidan was coming with him. His fingers were locked around Caleb’s wrist, a shade tighter than was comfortable. It made Caleb’s heart race, and he couldn’t say why.
It should have been a relief to enter the hallway, where the air was, if not fresh, at least fresher. But when Aidan leaned closer, the hallway didn’t feel any more spacious than the closet.
“Promise me you won’t jump into space,” Aidan said.
“Not even if I have a really good reason?” Caleb said, adding a breath of laughter so it would seem like a joke.
“Not even then,” Aidan agreed.
“He hurt you,” Caleb said. It was the only explanation he could offer for his sudden bloodlust, but it felt monumental. Undeniable. More than enough.
“We could get away with it,” Caleb added. Lots of people would notice Quint disappearing, but Oz’s presence could confuse the timeline, make it seem like Quint was still alive.
“We could,” Aidan said, not quite agreeing. He didn’t say anything else, stroking his thumb over the delicate tracery of veins and tendons at the inside of Caleb’s wrist.
“I wanted to kill him for a while, too,” Aidan continued. “Every time I want to enter the Nowhere and can’t, I think about it.”
Every time I remember you strapped down and starving, Caleb almost said, but didn’t. Aidan had been the victim. What he wanted was more important than what Caleb wanted.
“But he didn’t kill me. I’m alive. I’m here.” Aidan’s thumb was still moving. The rage that had bolted through Caleb remained, but quieted, another feeling blooming in its place.
It was warm in the hallway. His mouth had gone dry.
The closet door slid open, framing Oz. “Hey, are you coming back in or what? I need guidance here. I don’t want to screw this up.”
Aidan dropped his grip.
“Yeah,” Caleb said. “Yeah. Of course.”
They crowded back into the room. Caleb glanced at the display, where Quint was still leering at Lange while Kit and Emil stood, stiff and frowning, a few feet away. The sight washed over him like acid, stinging and corrosive, but he didn’t move to kill Quint this time.
No one was watching, so he reached for Aidan’s hand and squeezed. “Let’s fuck him up.”
Aidan might not be able to get into the Nowhere himself, but now that Dax had put him in touch with the Runners’ Union, he was almost as powerful. He’d asked Anna to come to Facility 17 this morning, and within five minutes of her arrival, she’d carried out a heist. Aidan was now in possession of one of Quint’s suits and a pair of his dress shoes.
“Well, that was the easiest crime I’ve ever committed,” he said, taking the suit from her and hanging it up in Caleb’s empty closet. It was the one Quint had worn yesterday, charcoal grey and barely wrinkled. “I hope it’s a sign.”
“Does it even count as you committing it?” Anna asked. She was less glamorous today than when he’d last seen her, in tight black exercise clothes with her hair in a single high braid. “I did the stealing.”
“Hush,” he said. “I’m the mastermind. Thank you, though.”
“Anything for our dear leader,” she said. “Oh, hey, I brought the stuff you wanted.”
She pulled a black knit hat and a pair of glasses out of the pocket of her hoodie. The glasses were large, with thick black plastic rims, but the lenses weren’t only for vision correction. The frame was embedded with tiny devices that would project different features onto his face.
Aidan didn’t normally rely on this kind of tech to disrupt facial recognition. His previous strategy had been to avoid places with cameras if possible, and to be ready to vanish at a moment’s notice otherwise.
That hadn’t saved him from Quint’s abduction, and now he was going to one of Quint’s homes, which would be equipped with his own proprietary algorithm. Quint had made enemies of people who couldn’t be deterred by locked doors, so his security system would rely on cameras all over the house, ready to call the authorities at the first sight of an unwelcome person. Aidan slid the glasses onto his face.
The hat was just a hat. He pulled it over his hair.
“What next? Need me to vanish?”
“If you don’t mind sticking around, I could use your help, but don’t feel obligated. I don’t want to out you,” he said. “Caleb’s up here. You still haven’t told him, right? There’s a lot of other people around, too.”
Anna nodded. “Thanks for thinking of me. I’m gonna go, but somebody else can pick up where I left off. I’ll pass the word along. You sure you’re safe up here?”
“I’m not staying. Next time I get in touch with the Union, it’ll be from the surface. I just need Laila to get Oz into character, and then we’ll go.”
“Where are you going? Or is that classified?”
“You’ll see,” Aidan said, and the arrival of the others saved him from further questions. Anna disappeared.
Caleb and Oz returned to the room, both freshly showered, and Laila and Kit came in a moment later. Kit was carrying a tote bag and a stack of clear boxes filled with makeup. It was hard to move among so many people.
Caleb and Aidan had been briefly separated, so according to their own rules, Caleb should prove his identity in some way. He hadn’t had to do it in front of such a large audience yet. The tight downturn of Caleb’s mouth reflected Aidan’s own uncertainty. Neither of them wanted to do this publicly.
“The doll,” Caleb said softly. “Deb’s doll Lulu. I once hid her in a vent because Deb was being annoying and I was being awful to her. You didn’t know anything about having a little sister, so you folded at the first sign of tears and rescued the doll for her. Then Deb told my parents that both of us took the doll from her, so you got in trouble just like I did. You didn’t even defend yourself, you were so surprised.”
“An early lesson in betrayal,” Aidan said, smiling at Caleb. “Deb’s always been trickier than she looks. Too smart for both of us.”
“What’s wrong with your face?” Caleb asked, frowning.
Aidan tapped his glasses. “Disruptor. You don’t like it? Usually the default setting on these things is an upgrade. Smoothing things over, making them more symmetrical. Hell, it’s probably straightening my teeth.”
“Your face was fine the way it was,” Caleb said.
“I feel like I’m not supposed to be watching this,” Laila said to Kit, loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Do you feel like that?”
“Definitely.”
“Well, I’d rather you watch them than watch me changing clothes,” Oz said. He sounded cheerful enough.
At this reminder of their nakedness, a flush crept down Caleb’s chest toward the white towel around his waist. Aidan always forgot how much chest hair Caleb had—not that he should remember a detail like that, or be looking in the first place.
“Be quiet and put that suit on, no one’s looking,” Laila said, turning her head. When he was done changing, she straightened his cuffs and collar. “You’ll do. Now hold still while I put some concealer on you.” Laila dabbed a little makeup under Oz’s eyes. Once finished, she wiped her hands off and then combed her fingers through his hair. “You’re gonna do just fine down there.”
Oz gave her his slickest trillionaire’s smile. Dizziness seized Aidan. Oz had gotten a little too good at acting.
Aidan couldn’t show any doubt, so he nodded and said, “Let’s go.”